Korean History: A Bibliography
Compiled by Kenneth R. Robinson
Maintained by The Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai`i


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Korean History: A Bibliography

Korean History: A Bibliography is compiled by Kenneth R. Robinson.

 

Introduction

This bibliography covers many features of Korean history. The subjects include not only political, diplomatic, and economic history, but also historical linguistics, art history, literature, philosophy and religion, and overseas Koreans, for example. Chronologically, coverage concludes in the 1960s. For studies of South Korea's politics and economy, 1961 is the stopping point; for South Korean foreign relations, coverage continues through the 1965 treaty with Japan and the Vietnam War. Coverage of North Korea continues into the late 1960s. I have not sought to compile a comprehensive list for each subject. Rather, I have provided publications that have appeared since the publication in 1980 of the annotated bibliography Studies on Korea: A Scholar's Guide and recent publications not cited in that work. This bibliography, then, is both an updating of and a supplement to that venerable reference.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find every entry listed here. Thus, some entries are incomplete. Another problem that I frequently encountered is the penchant of many writers to cite a journal article or book not through a romanization of the original language but through a translation into English of the title of the article, journal, and/or book in which the publication appears. The problem with this method of citation, of course, is that many university computer systems or card catalogues do not provide the translated English title of the journal or book. It has been my experience that the great majority of such citations are of non-English language publications. A very small number of entries thus may actually be for articles or chapters written in Korean or Japanese. The issue of romanization extends further. To ease the search for journals and books published abroad whose titles may be cited elsewhere through the English translation, I have sought to use exclusively the non-English title. For example, Asea yongu does not appear here as The Journal of Asiatic Studies. Still, as with the articles and chapters, there may be a few journal or book titles cited in English rather than in Korean or Japanese.

How to Use this Bibliography

 

Romanization: Whenever possible, I have used the McCune-Reischauer system for romanizing the names of Korean authors, publication titles, and publishers. An adaptation that I have made is romanizing the McCune-Reischauer si as shi, so that the family name Sin becomes Shin, for example. In the paper version of this bibliography, I have provided breves, macrons, and other diacritic marks when they appear in the publications. This has not been possible for the electronic text.

Names of authors: The Korean language does not suffer romanization easily. The combination of several romanization systems introduced over the years and personal preferences has resulted in a profusion of spellings for personal names. To avoid the confusion of searching for author names by various spellings, as noted, whenever possible I have tried to use the McCune-Reischauer system. This does not work universally, for there are many authors who appear only once in the bibliography and whose name in that publication follows a different romanization system. Thus, to those who have accessed the bibliography through the Center for Korean Studies web page and cannot flip from paper page to paper page, please be patient as you search by author. One drawback to this attempt at simplifying the search for author names is that the spelling accompanying their book in this bibliography does not in all cases match the spelling on the title page of the book. I hope that the reader will also search the university computer by book title as well by author.

Journal titles: First, as noted above, for journals published in South Korea, Japan, and elsewhere, I have used the title from that language. I have not followed the English-language translation of the title of journals, nor have I translated the Korean title into English. Second, for university journals I have tried to provide as complete a rendering of the journal title as possible. That is, to help the reader locate these journals more quickly, I have sought to include the university name and/or the research center name. The university name and research center name will be in parentheses so to aid computer searches. That is, for example, a journal title may be written as: (Yonse taehakkyo sahoe kwahak yonguso) Sahoe kwahak nonjip. The information in parentheses will help to identify the specific journal as titles such as this are common among university journals.

XXX: This sign indicates that that particular information is missing.

I have consulted several bibliographies and other sources in compiling these lists. The most helpful have been the Bibliography of Asian Studies (published in annual installments by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.), the Hanguksa yongu huibo (published quarterly by the Kuksa p'yonch'an wiwonhoe), the Running Bibliography in EAANnouncements (the newsletter of the East Asian Archaeology Network, soon to become the Society for East Asian Archaeology), "Recent Journal Articles on Korea" compiled by Dr. Forrest R. Pitts and Jennifer Lee for the Korean Studies Newsletter (published by The Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawaii), the Korea Journal Index 1961-1991 [Seoul: Korean National Commission for Unesco, 1991], and Yi Honjae, comp., Hanguk kogohak munhon mongnok [Seoul: Hagyon munhwasa, 1995]. For post-1945 Japanese-language historical scholarship on Korea, please consult Chosenshi kenkyukai, ed., Sengo Nihon ni okeru Chosenshi bunken mokuroku 1945-1991 [Tokyo: Ryokuin shobo, 1994].

Many people have helped with this project. I especially wish to thank the late Professor Marshall R. Pihl for his seemingly inexhaustible patience and for his all-purpose computer wizardry. I also wish to thank Kyungmi Chun, Joel Bradshaw, S. L. Austin, J. K. Kim, and the staff of the University of Hawaii library system for their assistance. Pat Polansky and David W. French helped with materials in Russian-language books and journals. Several other individuals alerted me to publications or helped me to complete entries. Of course, I am responsible for the many mistakes that undoubtedly remain in this bibliography. I would be grateful if readers would alert me to these mistakes or bring to my attention publications that I overlooked. These corrections and additions will be made available for users of the electronic and paper texts.

 

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Copyright 2004 Kenneth R. Robinson & Center for Korean Studies. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission of the author.